Bar owner uses Google glasses for free publicity

Oi, Brin you're barred.

A Seattle bar owner has hit on a wizard wheeze for some free publicity for his bar – he has banned Google Glasses from being seen there.

Dave Meinert, owner of the 5 Point, admits that his bar is not the best of joints and a lot of his customers have a lot of reasons for not wanting to be noticed.

So he has decided to ban Project Glass spectacles from his pub, claiming that they are an infringement of privacy.

Meinert found himself on the pundit circuit this weel after he posted a message on its Facebook page this week saying that 5 Point was the first Seattle business to ban in advance Google Glasses. "And ass kickings will be encouraged for violators."

The pub's owner suddenly found himself speaking on the Luke Burbank Show at KIRO-FM.

"You have to understand the culture of the 5 Point, which is a sometimes seedy, maybe notorious place. People want to go there and be not known ... and definitely don't want to be secretly filmed or videotaped and immediately put on the internet," he said.

He said that the pub does not let people film other people or take photos unwanted of people in the bar, because it is a private place that people go.

5 Point is near Amazon, and acknowledges that while "tech geeks" have been known to patronise the bar, they will not be allowed to wear them inside.

All this would be fair enough if Google had actually released its Google Glass project to the great unwashed. We doubt that either Meinert nor anyone in his bar has ever seen a set in action. Still nothing like free publicity when you are a self-confessed seedy bar.